DELPHI

 

Delphi shares the same root with the Greek word for womb, δελφύς. It is thus not only, as the ancient Greeks believed, the centre of the world but the beginning of everything. It is also the end. Prior to receiving its name, Delphi was known as Pytho, which is derived from the verb πύθω, which means to rot. Depending on which version of the myth you ascribe to, Delphi may also have taken its name from the Delphyne, the she-serpent who lived there and was killed by the god Apollo, although in other accounts the serpent was the male Python, who supposedly guarded the navel of the earth and died and rotted at the spot of his death.

All of the above comprises the foundation myth of author Karen Martin’s latest novel: “Delphi,” a sequel to her debut novel “Dancing the Labyrinth.” Like the place and the myths surrounding it, “Delphi” is a sophisticated, nuanced and often disconcerting exploration of trauma and how this manifests itself within a quest for self-identity.

Set in Crete and at Delphi, through the dual narrative of the heroine Cressida and Pythian Ashtar, the author ostensibly seeks to illuminate truths about the misrepresentations inscribed in our records of the past. In doing so however, her text becomes a profound meditation on psychological trauma, its expression in language, and the role of memory in shaping both individual and cultural identities. While the narrative is deceptively simple, as it unfolds it expertly and imperceptibly draws on psychoanalytic theories, particularly Freudian concepts, as well as post-structural, sociocultural, and postcolonial frameworks, in order to examine how extreme experiences are represented and how they influence identity and memory. Cressida’s trauma is both inherited, given her family history, experienced and through her connection, also forged through suffering, with the primordial violence not only against women but also directed by women against women which according to myth, shaped the world and which also, paradoxically, will save it.

The author, through a clever melding of timelines, characters, dreams, hallucinations, dialogues and inner monologues, portrays the aforementioned as a profoundly disruptive experience that affects the heroine’s emotional organization and perception of her world. Through her recourse to myth and the multiplicity of its variants, both the narrator and the heroine place themselves in a privileged position so as to examine trauma’s psychological, rhetorical, and cultural implications in literature and society, investigating the complex factors that shape the heroine’s appreciation of traumatic experiences and how such experiences are communicated through language.

This in particular is an area where “Delphi” can be distinguished from other novels of like genre. The author artfully places particular emphasis on how texts, stories and narratives illuminate the effects of extreme events on identity, memory, and the unconscious. Trauma studies initially relied on Freudian theory to conceptualize trauma as an experience so extreme it challenges the limits of language and ruptures meaning itself. Such a view posits that certain suffering is unrepresentable. However, a more pluralistic perspective soon followed, suggesting that unspeakability is just one possible response to trauma, not a universal one. The original model, which associates trauma with the fragmentation of the psyche and breakdown of language, set foundational parameters for the field but has since evolved with alternative approaches, expanding the conversation on trauma and representation. In “Delphi,” a deeply verbal novel, the author displays a deep understanding of such theories and converses intertextually with them. Cressida is eloquent and expressive in most of her social intercourse. In relation to her archetype abuser-aunt (not because she committed acts of violence against Cressida but because she stood by and did not prevent them) however, she is often struck dumb, whereas her inner monologue of desperation often deconstructs emotions and thought into fragments in the form of expletives, the process being both harrowing and liberating at the same time.

The heroine Cressida is guided through her trauma via a series of teachers, guides and protective powers. According to the narrator, Delphi and its tutelary deities all stem from the primeval Earth goddess Gaia. Accordingly, Cressida’s protective but emotionally distant lover is called Gorgios, referring not only to the earth but to the chthonic Gorgons, descendant of another primordial serpent, Typhon. While well meaning, he is by his very nature, unable to do more than be present in her emotional periphery. As the narrator states: “Gorgios [which also rhymes with gorgeous] was being a dick.” Her two main female guides however, are Angela, a sort of guardian angel who appears to be replete with wisdom, and true to the etymology of her name, acts as a form of messenger, conveying female lore, kindness and practical advice from the Great Mother, and the mysterious Ashtar, a Pythian, through whom Cressida is to save humanity from catastrophic misery. The ambiguous nature of Ashtar, for she appears in myth as the Moabite adaptation of the North Arabian god Attar, himself a form of the Semitic deity of the planet Venus, and thus as a male, or as an extra-terrestial Nordic humanoid, should not go unnoticed, as indeed should not the fact that we do not know that the agency sought of Cressida by Ashtar is external, or internal, in that Ashtar may merely be an aspect of her personality and by submitting to his/her entreaties, she is merely being enjoined to transcend her self in order to transcend her pain.

The conflation of genders, myths and dysphorias within the novel evokes a Freudian hysteria originating from the heroine’s deeply repressed experiences, here associated with sexual assault, that have been pushed out of conscious awareness. In his Studies in Hysteria, Freud and his collaborator Breuer proposed that the original experience itself may not have felt traumatic at the time but becomes charged with traumatic significance only in retrospect, through the process of memory and reflection. They suggest that the persistent and disruptive influence of this repressed memory necessitates therapeutic intervention, specifically, the “talking cure” or abreaction, where the patient expresses and emotionally relives the past event to mitigate its ongoing, symptom-inducing power. In many ways, and through the intervention of Cressida’s guardians, both supernatural and otherwise, her long process of interpreting, identifying and coming to terms with her trauma and identity embody that undertaking. She confirm this, stating: “Nai, the Sirens called me.”

The appearance of Cressida’s long-lost aunt, an archetypal dragon-lady if there ever was one, with whom she has had no contact, illustrates Freud’s theory of latency or deferred action (Nachträglichkeit), which refers to a period during which the effects and meanings of the past event remain dormant, only surfacing later when triggered by a related experience. This latency period suggests that the true impact of the original event is neither immediate nor accessible at the time it occurs; instead, it emerges later, when a current incident reactivates the memory. This process allows the repressed memory to come into conscious awareness, enabling the individual to confront and process it fully, which Freud believed was essential for overcoming the symptoms of trauma. As Angela observes or rather warns: “A brief history recap is begging to be told.” In the case of the heroine, the reactivation of her memory is occasioned by her aunt’s demands upon her time, and her claims upon a filial piety that does not exist and, in a dramatic revelation, is twisted and perverted ab initio, causing Cressida to slay her own monsters, become her own Oracle and realise just how privileged and rich she actually has become through her travails.

The narrative plausibly evokes the magical landscape of Greece and the author masterfully is able to imbue her descriptions with a rhythm, almost that of a dance that leads inexorably to the novel’s conclusion. Her observations of human nature, of the disparity between Greek and British cultures, of commonly held prejudices and stereotypes, of convictions and misconceptions are acute and her attention to detail is awe inspiring. The manner in which she persistently reproduces Cressida’s mispronunciations and ungrammatical Greek is a case in point. The medium in which she attempts to communicate may be flawed but ultimately it is via the deconstruction of language, through the intercession of her pantheon of chthonic deities that ensues that Cressida can work through her past, and save the world, in keeping with the Delphic Oracle, by “knowing herself.”

DEAN KALIMNIOU

Dean Kalimniou will launch Karen Martin’s “Delphi,” at the Greek Centre, 168 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne on Sunday 17 November 2024 at 3pm.

For Bookings: https://www.trybooking.com/events/landing/1310056

First published in NKEE on Saturday 9 November 2024